Two short, and non-technical, pieces that touch into the matter, from
David Freedman and David Freedman/Richard Berk:

http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~census/sample.pdf

http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~census/berk2.pdf

Best.

Jorge Bravo.

PS: Both authors have recently written what I think are superb textbooks,
that will hopefully make it into social science syllabi.


On Tue, 27 Sep 2005, Will H. Moore wrote:

> I imagine several people received the query below.  It seems to me to
> be an interesting question for discussion, so I offer it for your
> consideration.
>
> - Will
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> > From: "TALEBANM" <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: September 27, 2005 4:02:29 AM EDT
> > To: "Will H. Moore" <[log in to unmask]>
> > Subject: a question
> >
> > Dear professor
> > I have a question of you and if it is possible for you to answer me, I
> > will be so thankful .
> > Research on cross-national determinants of a phenomena limits the
> > sample to countries with data availability and typically do not have
> > randomly drawn samples, though unavoidable. if the primary assumption
> > of all significance tests is probability or randomly sampling why
> > cross-national's scholarlies apply these tests?
> >
> > I am waiting for your response.
> > With kind regards.
> >
> > Mohammadreza Taleban
> >
> > Dept. of sociology
> > Faculty of Humanities
> > Tarbiat Modarres University
> > Tehran I. R. IRAN
>
> --
> Will H. Moore
> [log in to unmask]
> http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~whmoore/
>
> Professor
> Department of Political Science
> Florida State University
> Tallahassee, FL 32306-2230
> phone: 850.644.6924
> fax: 850.644.1367
>
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